Raymie Jewell is giving me directions to her home on Selbourne Dr. in Port Stanley when, in the midst of it all, she pauses.

“You’ll notice the house,” she says, simply.

She’s right.

As I pull up to the suburban home she shares with her partner Dennis Taylor, I wonder if this place can be seen from outer space.

Because Jewell and Taylor have decorated their residence with Christmas lights — more than 65,000, to be precise.

“We’ve always done lights,” says Jewell. “But it’s just grown.”

To be sure, the display has expanded more than an average waistline at Christmas; Taylor figures that when he started doing this 11 years ago, he strung up about 5,000 lights. By 2010, he’d accumulated about 50,000 bulbs; he figures he hit 56,000 last year.

In addition to those bulbs, Taylor estimates he uses more than 4,000 metres of home-made extension cords (plus hundreds of cords he bought), more than 180 metres of computer cable and 96 power plugs amassed in six separate control boxes.

And all of it — including the non-stop recording of 20 Christmas songs that can be heard by anyone nearby who tunes their radio to 99.9 FM — is co-ordinated by a central computer.

“I’ve always had a fascination for lights,” says Taylor. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve just loved them. And I think I always will.”

A few years ago, appreciative gawkers started pressing money into Taylor’s hand to help defray his costs, but he didn’t feel right about accepting it. So for the past three years, visitors have been given the option of leaving a cash donation for the Make-A-Wish Southwestern Ontario agency, or an item of food for the Port Stanley food bank.

During the past two years, the couple has raised more than $6,000 for Make-A-Wish; last year they collected more than 450 kilograms of dried food for the needy.

“(Jewell and Taylor) are such great people,” says Lori Quick, chief executive officer of Make-A-Wish Southwestern Ontario, which dispatches volunteers every evening to help guide visitors around the site. “They love what they do and they love that they’re helping us.”

Of course, nearly everyone wants to know the same thing: How much does it cost?

Taylor ducks the question.

“I probably don’t want to know how much I’ve spent,” he says. “It’s a lot. It’s a pretty expensive hobby . . . but there are more expensive hobbies out there.”

Taylor, who works as a maintenance electrician at General Dynamics Land Systems in London, starts working on the display after Halloween; he estimates he put in more than 200 hours of labour, with at least another 100 hours of toil from various friends and volunteers.

And while he likely won’t win any conservation awards, Taylor points out that nearly 90% of the lights are energy-efficient LEDs.

“The people who come here are people who want to see lights, and they all love it,” he says. “I’ve never had anybody come and say it’s awful.”

Jewell helps see to that.

“I said I’d support him in anything he wanted to do,” she says, “but if he did it tacky, I was pulling the plug.”